We are proud to share that the Rady School is recognized as a Top-Veteran School by U.S. Veterans magazine. The list of schools was compiled from market research, independent research, diversity conference participation and survey responses.
Earlier this month, the Rady School also announced a new partnership with San Diego Military Advisory Council. We will provide research support for the annual Military Economic Impact Report (MEIR), for which associate professor Sally Sadoff will lead a data analysis, supported by a group of Rady School MBA students. The MEIR is an independent annual study to comprehensively quantify the impact of defense-related expenditures on the San Diego region’s economy.
The Rady School is proud to offer benefits to our Veterans, including:
- We will waive the application fee current and former members of the military applying to any Rady MBA program. Please contact Graduate Admissions to receive the application fee waiver before submitting your application.
- In the Spring and Fall, we offer complimentary GMAT Prep courses to eligible military veterans or active duty personnel.
- As part of the Yellow Ribbon Program, we partner with the Veteran’s Administration to fund tuition and fee expenses that exceed the tuition and fee amounts payable under the Post-9/11 GI Bill.
- Our StartR Veteran program is a commitment to provide Veterans with entrepreneurial programs, resulting in greater confidence and increased skills as they transition into the civilian world. The program utilizes a “Veterans helping Veterans” approach, providing participants with inspiration, support and mentoring throughout the 10 session program.
- The Rady School’s small size means that our career management center can provide individualized attention as you assess your strengths and explore the career path that is right for you.
Hear from Rady Veteran alumni about their experience:
“Being accepted to Rady was a life-changing experience and really solidified the transition plan I had from the Military to the civilian world.” – Robert Sweetman II (MBA ’19)
“Being a former counterintelligence agent, I’m very inquisitive. I’m always asking questions and I always want to understand what makes things work and why. When I was able to see the touchpoints that the Rady program has relative towards healthcare, technology, broader sciences and business, [it was clear that] they don’t just you these individual disciplines. They teach you how to blend them all together in order to actually make it function. That’s what the Rady experience was for me. That was the most valuable thing they gave me: to take a dream and turn it into reality.” – Clay Treska (MBA ’19)
Teigan MacDonald was working on her application to the Rady School’s full-time MBA program while sitting in a hotel hallway in Fall 2018. She had traveled to Marietta, GA, to compete with her rugby club, the San Diego Surfers, in the Women’s Premier League National Championship. Teigan scored the first try of the match (like football’s touchdown) and the Surfers defeated the Glendale Merlins 34-28. That championship marked the second of three in Teigan’s rugby career, and the beginning of her new career.
Born and raised in Modesto, CA, Teigan earned a B.S. in biology and minor in economics from UC San Diego. When she began her undergraduate studies, she thought she might like to work in a bioengineering lab. “I took my first lab class and I absolutely hated it,” she says. “I hated not having windows and not being able to talk to people. It’s a very individualized experience.” Having spent most of her life playing–and thriving–in team sports, Teigan realized that the lab environment wasn’t for her.
Inspired by family members who’d studied economics, Teigan began taking coursework that blended her interests, such as economics of the environment and economics of healthcare. “I loved that you could take a class [on these subjects] and apply business concepts to them,” says Teigan. She’d found her niche. Before she graduated, Teigan’s dad, a stock broker, recommended that she take a personal finance class, one of the Rady School’s undergraduate offerings.
“I remember walking into Wells Fargo Hall and thinking, ‘Why have I not been here the whole time?’” Teigan says. “‘Whatever I need to do, I want to [study] here.” she says. “I was able to meet Joe Pecore, a great instructor. I went to his office hours and he really helped me figure out what I wanted to do and why I should go get an MBA.”
Teigan began the full-time MBA program in Fall 2019. “What I’ve enjoyed the most so far about is the holistic experience I’m getting at a graduate school,” she says. “My undergraduate experience at UC San Diego was great, but I didn’t really have career networking or resume workshops. I wasn’t really close with my classmates because I was in classes with 300 students. When I came to Rady, I thought, ‘Wow, this is more than just going to school. This is building a career.”
This summer, Teigan begins a new role in sales support at ACADIA pharmaceuticals, where she works part-time as a commercial operations analyst. She says that working closely with Rady career advisor Stephanie Sindt earlier this year helped prepare her for a new challenge. “We had internship meetups every week before COVID. It was a great way to crowdsource and work as a group and get Steaphine’s expertise. We would prepare for interviews and work on our cover letters and resumes.”
Ultimately, Teigan says that her dream job is managing sales teams for a biotech or pharmaceutical company. It’s a role that combines the competitiveness she’s fostered throughout her life in sports, the knowledge she’s gaining in her courses, and the collaboration and experience she receives among her peers.
“People forget that you try to interact with people just like you. This program encourages you to work with different people and learn how other people operate and work,” she says.
Teigan says that her favorite Rady experiences so far include her fall marketing class, the career treks organized by the Life Sciences Club to San Diego companies such as Thermo Fisher Scientific and ResMed, and conversations before and after class with her fellow students. Despite the current challenges and activities on hold–including rugby–due to the pandemic, Teigan remains optimistic about her future.
“When I land an interview or get a chance to talk to a company I’m interested in, I feel like I’ve scored a try, because it’s just one step closer to my goal.”
As the shelter-in-place orders find many of us exploring new hobbies—i.e. baking banana bread—and finding ways to fill time at home, MSBA student Diego Amenabar has been busy blogging. He has published two articles on the popular blog Towards Data Science. Not only that, but earlier this year he started his own website, Healthy-Analyst.com, where he tracks data from wearable devices to inform his health decisions, and hopes to inspire others to do the same.
What do you enjoy about writing?
I made myself a goal to practice my writing skills and what better way to do that than to write interesting blog posts? It all started trying to create a portfolio of my work for future job applications. To be able to publish some works, I need original ideas so I can also try to publish them in an important website. That’s how it started and I’ve had lot of fun and new knowledge in the journey. I will probably keep writing while I have ideas that are worth to share.
What made you decide to pursue an MSBA?
I think information is going to drive companies in the near future. Being able to understand it and get insights from it is going to be a basic skill. Many people ask why an MSBA and not a Master in Data Science, and from my end, the most important part about using information to drive a company is to being able to “read” the data in the context of the business for it to be useful. For this, MSBA is the perfect mix between technology and business.
What do you enjoy most about the Rady MSBA program?
It is an intensive program. Coming from years of industry experience, some in fast-paced companies and some in slow-paced, you start to appreciate when the intensity pushes you forward in achieving your goals, and learn [what you need to know] in the work environment. You do need to be responsible and be able to deliver on certain deadlines.
Read Diego’s Towards Data Science articles:
Not a Funnel! Use Sankey to represent your sales process
Follow Healthy Analyst on Twitter @healthy_analyst and Instagram @healthyanalyst.
As the coronavirus continues to affect our public health and economy, the pandemic has reintroduced words into our everyday vocabulary. What does it mean to be “essential”? On what industries do we depend when so much around us shuts down?
The first-ever virtual Rady Executive Breakfast Series will feature Hector Lujan, CEO of Reiter Affiliated Companies (RAC), the world’s largest multi-berry producer. On May 21st from 8-9 a.m., Lujan will speak about his experience navigating the pandemic in the agricultural industry. RAC is an exclusive grower of Driscoll’s varieties of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries across the United States, Baja California, Central Mexico, Portugal, Morocco and Peru.
Lujan, who holds a degree in business administration from Instituto Tecnologico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, México, has worked for RAC since 2002, and served as CEO since 2017. He previously worked four years with a Mexican financial institution and six years in the agricultural sector. Earlier this year, Lujan was named one of the most influential people from Mexico by Lideres Mexicanos, a business and leadership magazine.
RSVP to attend the Rady Executive Breakfast Series here.
The Rady Executive Breakfast Series is sponsored by Union Bank.
Over the past couple of months, the world has experienced changes, challenges and grief like we have never known. Each day brings with it new hurdles to overcome, but also new reasons to be hopeful.
The UC San Diego community is working tirelessly to find solutions to the obstacles we face as a result of the the pandemic. From critical research to combat COVID-19 to making masks for healthcare workers, we are proud to witness inspiring acts of resilience and care.
In recognition of the ways the community has shown care during crisis, and to support these efforts as the crisis continues, UC San Diego has organized u.Care, a “Day of Caring” from 6 a.m. on May 14-2 p.m. on May 15. During these 32 hours, our UC San Diego community is encouraged to share inspiring stories, and, if you are able, donate a gift of any amount to make a difference.
We are so proud of the many Rady School alumni, partners, staff, students, and faculty who have found ways to support others in this difficult time. We have shared several of these inspiring stories below:
You can also dedicate your gift to UC San Diego’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund and participate in a $350,000 match thanks to a generous challenge grant from The Conrad Prebys Foundation.
Richard Castle (FlexWeekend MBA ’13), the co-founder and president of Cloudbeds, a hospitality management software, launched the #HospitalityHelps initiative. The online platform facilitates connections between hotel properties that want to make their beds available to healthcare agencies, organizations or individuals who need them. Within a few days, the more than 1.2 million beds had been pledged at HospitalityHelps.org.
Alumni working at the Scripps Research Institute are conducting a study to improve the real-time surveillance of contagious respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19 using data from smartwatches and activity trackers. Through the app-based DETECT study, Katie Baca-Motes (MBA ’09 and Director of the All of Us research project), Royan Kamyar (MBA ’10, physician and CEO and founder of Owaves app) and project manager and incoming MBA FlexWeekend student Lauren Ariniello, along with their colleagues, are crowdsourcing anonymized data across the United States.
“By evaluating individual changes to heart rate, sleep and activity patterns, as well as logged respiratory symptoms and diagnostics test results, the Scripps’ team hopes to complement traditional public health surveillance methods, potentially leading to earlier detection and containment of current and future outbreaks in various geographical locations,” said Baca-Motes.
Three MBA 2021 students have organized a GoFundMe campaign to manufacture and distribute 3D-printed mask kits. Since organizing the campaign in early April, Amir Hassan and Nicholas DiGirolamo (MBA ’21) and Mark Schultzel (FlexWeeend MBA ’21) have delivered more than 500 face mask kits to local organizations in need.
Snehanshu Tiwari, Vishnu Sharon R. and Sakshi Sharma (MSBA ’18) contacted Professor Ken Wilbur to offer their help reviewing resumes, preparing for interviews or make introductions for current MSBA students graduating this summer. When Professor Wilbur shared this update on LinkedIn, even more alumni offered to help!
Sean Haggerty (FlexWeekend MBA ’17), founder of Protector Brewery, made curbside pickup and delivery available, in addition to offering the brewery’s supply of filtered water available to those in need. Protector Brewery has pledged to donate $1 from each order to Team Rubicon, a non-profit organization supporting veterans impacted by COVID-19.
Grace Evans Cherashore, a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and Executive Chairwoman of Evans Hotels, is leading an effort to make hotel rooms open and available to healthcare workers. Medical workers who present ID at The Lodge at Torrey Pines, Catamaran and Bahia Resort Hotels are eligible to receive a discount of more than 50%. “The medical workers want to be in this fight as long as they can and a hotel allows them to be isolated,” Bill Evans, co-owner of Evans Hotel told 10 News. The Evans family has been a generous partner to the Rady School.
Jaden Risner and Clay Treska (FlexWeekend MBA ’19) founded Family Proud an app to help patients and their caregivers and loved ones manage their care, while they were students at the Rady School. In Spring 2020, the Family Proud platform was updated to include resources and support for those affected by COVID-19.
Steve Prestrelski (FlexWeekend MBA ’06) is the founder and chief scientific officer of Xeris Pharmaceuticals, which is offering its GVOKE Pre-Filled Syringe—an injectable treatment for diabetes patients who experience severe hypoglycemia—for $0 copay through May 31st.
The team at Indigo Marketing Agency, founded by Claire Akin (MBA ’10). prepared a list of tips for working from home. “Indigo Marketing Agency is a company run almost completely virtually by mothers of young children,” said Akin. “We saw so many of our clients struggling to adapt, so we wanted to offer our tips and tricks for working at home (even with small children) … I believe that we are helping our team members support their families and spend time with their children. It’s the best of both worlds and it provides a highly fulfilling lifestyle!”
Rady Alumni Board president Josh Kuss is the Senior Director of Commercial Strategy at Illumina and the commercial lead for the company’s San Diego Emergency Management Team. The team has been working since March “defining and implementing the strategies for how we keep Illumina’s employees safe, while ensuring supply to our customers, many of which are on the front line of SARS-COV-2/COVID19 research, tracing, and treatment. We tackled how to transition to work from home, and are now in the process of determining a sound return to work strategy,” said Kuss.
Academic Assessment Senior Analyst Christine McMahan volunteers with a national organization that has provided 100,000 masks for front-line workers. McMahan also offered to sew masks for Rady School staff and faculty in need. She made 65 in total, sewing every evening until she ran out of supplies.
Krithi Bindal (MBA ’17) is the founder and president of Aroga Biosciences, a regulatory writing biopharma firm which has been donating their scientific expertise to peer-review pre-print literature related to COVID-19 research.
“We are in a period of information overload,” said Bindal. “Misinformation about COVID-19, especially information lacking scientific rigor, can lead to significant risk to the public. I feel it is our duty as scientists to ensure effective communication and to help delineate scientific factual results from fiction. After all, our job as scientists is to find the truth.”
“The name of our company Aroga is based on the sanskrit term ‘arogya”, which means free of disease. We hope to continue to contribute to freeing the world of disease as we help to develop treatments for ailing patients. As we navigate these challenging times, our mission is unchanged and is stronger than ever.”
Sara Jones (Flex Weekend ’13) is the CEO of Plum Blossom Creations. She is offering free workshops on The Big Four of Mental Toughness.
“As an Unbeatable Mind student, I learned first-hand the power of the Big 4 of Mental Toughness in my fight against Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I used the Big 4 to feed my Courage Wolf, stare down my fears and thrive through the health crisis that threatened my life…
As lives were disrupted by homeschooling, layoffs, new routines and all the rest, I wanted to do what I could to help. As an Unbeatable Mind Coach, I had access to the four habits, tried and tested by warriors for 1000s of years, made simple and doable by Mark Divine, retired Navy SEAL through the Unbeatable Mind Academy. And I wanted to share those tools with others.”
To learn more about the Big Four of Mental Toughness, connect with Sara by email sara.jones@unbeatablemind.com or on LinkedIn. To sign up for coaching, visit https://bit.ly/UMCoachingwithSaraJones.
More ways in which the UC San Diego community is responding to COVID-19:
- Medical school researchers launched “MyWellnessCheck,” an online platform to help identify how certain attitudes and behaviors may help increase well-being during a crisis.
- UC San Diego Health is offering virtual appointments for people that have tested positive for COVID-19 but don’t require hospital care
- Groups of engineering students spent their spring break designing a low-cost, easy-to-use and easy-to-build ventilator that could serve COVID-19 patients
- The Theatre Costume Shop made and donated over 150 masks to UC San Diego nurses in one week.
- UC San Diego physician-scientist Dr. Eliah Aronoff-Spencer, along with a team of researchers, built a rapid response platform to connect clinicians with answers to COVID-19 questions, resources and potential solutions to the challenges they face.
Read more about UC San Diego’s response to COVID-19 here.
Are you a member of the Rady School community who would like to share a story of care? Please fill out this form or email cacannon@ucsd.edu.
As we all navigate a new reality as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, job searching can feel like particularly shaky terrain. To address concerns around the job market, FlexMBA and Alumni Career Consultant Linda Kurtz recently led virtual workshops for Rady School students. Below, we’ve compiled expertise shared by Kurtz and fellow Career Management Center staff to help provide guidance for the Rady community.
Research industries of interest and look for trends.
“I want to be transparent,” Kurtz said during the workshop. “Some companies are actively hiring and recruiting, some are putting things on pause, and some are laying people off.”
To discover which companies and industries are actively hiring, Kurtz and the Career Management Center staff shared several resources.
For one, Candor.co is compiling a live, user-generated report of hiring activity across industries. CultivatedCulture.com prepared a COVID-19 job market insights guide, which summarized Candor.co’s findings as of April 4th:
Industries of particular interest to Rady School graduates such as consulting & services, business software and financial services are showing a lot of hiring activity.
LinkedIn has also compiled this regularly updated list of companies currently hiring to meet increased demands.
Startup San Diego, CONNECT San Diego and San Diego: Life Changing, a division of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Council, has put together this list of companies with current job openings.
“Think about the functional areas that are being impacted,” said Mitchell Kam, Assistant Director of the Career Management Center. Ecommerce companies experiencing an increase in online orders are also experiencing an uptick of data. They’re likely to seek data analysts not just during the pandemic, but in the aftermath as well.
Create a job search plan.
While uncertainty can feel overwhelming, creating a plan can help you prioritize and take action. Kurtz recommended these three steps:
- Write down your goals. Where would you like to be professionally in the next three to five years? What short-term adjustments might you need to make to get there?
- Create a list of desired industries, roles, companies and locations. Include relevant advocates and contacts.
- Continue applying to jobs and follow up on your applications.
“Even if an interview process is put on pause, the good news is that you are likely to be considered when interviewing resumes,” Kurtz said. Be “politely persistent” as you follow up, and keep in mind that everyone you are in contact with is likely experiencing their own concerns about the pandemic.
Continue to network online.
Without the opportunity to attend in-person networking events or schedule casual coffee chats, a thoughtful online networking strategy is more important than ever. You may find your inbox bombarded with Zoom happy hour invitations, connection requests, or colleagues checking-in.
Kurtz recommended prioritizing your networking efforts according to your job search plan so that you can maximize your time and make the most meaningful online connections. “Companies need the right talent to help them move their business forward,” she said. Conversations with your network can help you learn early about new opportunities, or learn about ways in which a business is shifting its priorities.
“It’s a better time than ever to be reaching out on LinkedIn,” said Graduate Career Advisor Michelle Sedgwick. “A lot of us have been through ups and downs of the economy in the past and people want to be able to provide some support.”
Now is also a good time to make sure your LinkedIn profile (and website, if applicable), are up-to-date. When requesting new LinkedIn connections, be sure to include a brief message about why you’re interested in talking to them, and what you have in common. A little customization can go a long way, and gives a personal touch to electronic communication.
Upskill (in a way that makes sense for your goals).
Many online learning sites are currently offering free or discounted courses. Research which programs can get you closer to the goals you outlined in your job search plan. Students can arrange a meeting with Rady Career Management Center advisors to personalize their plan. Online learnings options to consider include:
Take care of yourself.
It’s absolutely normal to feel overwhelmed by this pandemic. As you continue your job search, remember to look out for your health, too. UC San Diego has compiled a list of resources for coping with coronavirus stress that includes tips for preserving your mental, physical and emotional health. Your well-being comes first!
Alumni working at the Scripps Research Institute are conducting a study to improve the real-time surveillance of contagious respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19 using data from smartwatches and activity trackers. Through the app-based DETECT study, Katie Baca-Motes (MBA ’09 and Director of the All of Us research project), Royan Kamyar (MBA ’10, physician and CEO and founder of Owaves app) and project manager and incoming MBA FlexWeekend student Lauren Ariniello, along with their colleagues, are crowdsourcing anonymized data across the United States.
“By evaluating individual changes to heart rate, sleep and activity patterns, as well as logged respiratory symptoms and diagnostics test results, the Scripps’ team hopes to complement traditional public health surveillance methods, potentially leading to earlier detection and containment of current and future outbreaks in various geographical locations,” said Baca-Motes.
Rady Alumni Board president Josh Kuss is the Senior Director of Commercial Strategy at Illumina and the commercial lead for the company’s San Diego Emergency Management Team. The team has been working since March “defining and implementing the strategies for how we keep Illumina’s employees safe, while ensuring supply to our customers, many of which are on the front line of SARS-COV-2/COVID19 research, tracing, and treatment. We tackled how to transition to work from home, and are now in the process of determining a sound return to work strategy,” said Kuss.
Krithi Bindal (MBA ’17) is the founder and president of Aroga Biosciences, a regulatory writing biopharma firm which has been donating their scientific expertise to peer-review pre-print literature related to COVID-19 research.
“We are in a period of information overload,” said Bindal. “Misinformation about COVID-19, especially information lacking scientific rigor, can lead to significant risk to the public. I feel it is our duty as scientists to ensure effective communication and to help delineate scientific factual results from fiction. After all, our job as scientists is to find the truth.”
“The name of our company Aroga is based on the sanskrit term ‘arogya”, which means free of disease. We hope to continue to contribute to freeing the world of disease as we help to develop treatments for ailing patients. As we navigate these challenging times, our mission is unchanged and is stronger than ever.”
Richard Castle (FlexWeekend MBA ’13), the co-founder and president of Cloudbeds, a hospitality management software, launched the #HospitalityHelps initiative. The online platform facilitates connections between hotel properties that want to make their beds available to healthcare agencies, organizations or individuals who need them. Within a few days, the more than 1.2 million beds had been pledged at HospitalityHelps.org.
Andrea Yoder Clark (MSBA ’17), and her consulting company LiveGoode Programs & Analytics is working with 211 San Diego to analyze statewide data collected from regional 211s to support the state of California’s policy response to COVID-19’s impact on most vulnerable populations.
Jaden Risner and Clay Treska (FlexWeekend MBA ’19) founded Family Proud an app to help patients and their caregivers and loved ones manage their care, while they were students at the Rady School. In Spring 2020, the Family Proud platform was updated to include resources and support for those affected by COVID-19.
Snehanshu Tiwari, Vishnu Sharon R. and Sakshi Sharma (MSBA ’18) contacted Professor Ken Wilbur to offer their help reviewing resumes, preparing for interviews or make introductions for current MSBA students graduating this summer. When Professor Wilbur shared this update on LinkedIn, even more alumni offered to help!
Steve Prestrelski (FlexWeekend MBA ’06) is the founder and chief scientific officer of Xeris Pharmaceuticals, which is offering its GVOKE Pre-Filled Syringe—an injectable treatment for diabetes patients who experience severe hypoglycemia—for $0 copay through May 31st.
The team at Indigo Marketing Agency, founded by Claire Akin (MBA ’10). prepared a list of tips for working from home. “Indigo Marketing Agency is a company run almost completely virtually by mothers of young children,” said Akin. “We saw so many of our clients struggling to adapt, so we wanted to offer our tips and tricks for working at home (even with small children) … I believe that we are helping our team members support their families and spend time with their children. It’s the best of both worlds and it provides a highly fulfilling lifestyle!”
Sean Haggerty (FlexWeekend MBA ’17), founder of Protector Brewery, made curbside pickup and delivery available, in addition to offering the brewery’s supply of filtered water available to those in need. Protector Brewery has pledged to donate $1 from each order to Team Rubicon, a non-profit organization supporting veterans impacted by COVID-19.
Sara Jones (Flex Weekend ’13) is the CEO of Plum Blossom Creations. She is offering free workshops on The Big Four of Mental Toughness. “As an Unbeatable Mind student, I learned first-hand the power of the Big 4 of Mental Toughness in my fight against Triple Negative Breast Cancer. I used the Big 4 to feed my Courage Wolf, stare down my fears and thrive through the health crisis that threatened my life.”
Roche Diagnostics North America, of which Matt Sause (FlexWeekend MBA ’06) is president and CEO, developed the first available commercial test kit for the novel coronavirus, which was granted Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA.
Do you know of a Rady School of Management alumni responding to COVID-19? Please email cacannon@ucsd.edu with more information.
Raise your hand if you’ve got a smartphone next to you. This one’s for you.
“Brain Drain,” a 2017 research paper co-authored by Rady School professor Ayelet Gneezy and Ph.D. graduate Kristen Duke (Ph.D. ’19), was recently recognized as having the highest social impact according to a best in class survey by Financial Times.
Gneezy and Duke’s research tested the “brain drain” hypothesis, that the “mere presence” of your smartphone might make it more difficult for you to engage with the task at hand, even when you’re resisting the temptation to actually check your phone. (Their research suggests that it does.)
Now raise your hand if you’ve just thrown your phone out the window.
To measure social impact, Financial Times first asked business schools to submit up to five research papers published within the last five years for consideration. Using Altmetrics, Financial Times measured “the online resonance that each [research paper] had with the wider world beyond universities,” including data such as academic citations, blog references and tweets. “Brain Drain” received an Altmetric score of 3956, more than five times higher than the second-highest-scoring paper.
Another paper, co-authored by Rady School Professor Sally Sadoff, “The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance,” was also recognized among the top 100 results in the survey.
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